Sofia Amara | |
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 Amara in 2008 | |
| Born | May 25, 1968 Casablanca, Morocco |
| Nationality | French - Moroccan |
| Alma mater | University of Jordan - Sciences Po Paris |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, film director |
| Years active | 1993-present |
Sofia Amara (born 25 May 1968) is a French-Moroccan journalist and film director.
Amara was born in Casablanca in 1968. She graduated from the University of Jordan with a bachelor's degree in political science and from the IEP in Paris in 1996. Amara began her professional career as a correspondent in the Middle East for various channels and radio stations. She covered events such as the first Palestinian Intifada, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, and the return of Yasser Arafat to Gaza. [1]
Amara reported on the Arab Spring in Egypt, and was jailed twice alongside protestors in Cairo. She has produced documentaries on the Syrian Civil War since its outset in 2011. [2] In 2014, Amara published the book Infiltrée dans l'enfer syrien : du Printemps de Damas à l'Etat islamique in which she proposed that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was actually an objective ally of Bashar al-Assad. [3] After Mosul was liberated in 2017, Amara became one of the first female journalists to enter the city with the Iraqi army. [2]
In 2017, she directed the documentary The Lost Children of the Caliphate, which depicted children as young as eight becoming brainwashed and receiving weapons training. [4] It received the AMADE Prize at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival. [2] In 2018, Amara published the book Baghdadi, the Caliph of Terror. It contained her interviews with the ex-wife and daughter of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of ISIL. The book examined the rise to power of al-Baghdadi and its effects on the world. [5]
Amara is based out of Beirut. In 2019, she criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for not having a Middle East policy and ignoring the abuses of the Arab governments. Amara stated that the most worrying conclusion of the Arab Spring was that "there are crisis managers who act on the basis of their own interests which often change and are sometimes poorly calculated." [2]
The Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon was a League of Nations mandate founded in the aftermath of the First World War and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, concerning Syria and Lebanon. The mandate system was supposed to differ from colonialism, with the governing country intended to act as a trustee until the inhabitants were considered eligible for self-government. At that point, the mandate would terminate and a sovereign state would be born.
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist group and a former unrecognised quasi-state. Its origins were in the Jai'sh al-Taifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004, which fought alongside al-Qaeda during the Iraqi insurgency. The group gained global prominence in 2014, when its militants successfully captured large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, taking advantage of the ongoing Syrian civil war. By the end of 2015, it ruled an area with an estimated population of twelve million people, where it enforced its extremist interpretation of Islamic law, managed an annual budget exceeding US$1 billion, and commanded more than 30,000 fighters.
The Type 77 heavy machine gun or Type 85 is a Chinese 12.7×108mm heavy machine gun featuring an indigenous design.
Gilles Jacquier was a French photojournalist and reporter for France Télévisions. Jacquier worked as a special correspondent for Envoyé spécial, one of France's best known documentary programs which airs on France 2. He had a successful career, has covered major international military conflicts and won many awards during his life. He was killed on 11 January 2012 while covering the ongoing Syrian Civil War in Homs, Syria. Jacquier was the first Western journalist killed in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War.
Randa Kassis is a Franco-Syrian politician and a leading secular figure of the Syrian opposition. She was the President of The Astana Platform of the Syrian opposition and the founder of the Movement of the Pluralistic Society.
The International reactions to ISIL has widely been condemnation and declaration as a terrorist group, however, there have been pockets of support for the group shown in opinion polling in July 2014 conducted at the request of the Russian state news agency Rossiya Segodnya by ICM Research in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Further support arises from factions of Al Qaeda, and other radical elements both inside and out of governments.
Al-Hayat Media Center is a media wing of the Islamic State. It was established in mid-2014 and targets international (non-Arabic) audiences as opposed to their other Arabic-focused media wings and produces material, mostly Nasheeds, in English, German, Russian, Urdu, Indonesian, Turkish, Bengali, Chinese, Bosnian, Kurdish, Uyghur, and French.
Opération Chammal is a French military operation in Iraq and Syria launched to help curtail the expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and to support the Iraqi Army. Its name comes from the Shamal, a northwesterly wind that blows over Iraq and the Persian Gulf states.
The Battle of Sirte refers to the battle in the spring of 2015, in the region of Sirte, Libya, between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Libya Shield Force. ISIL forces had been present in the city since February 2015, before the Fall of Nofaliya. After Nofaliya fell to ISIL forces, the Tripoli-based government had decided to send reinforcements to recapture Sirte.
On 26 June 2015, attacks occurred in France, Kuwait, and Tunisia, one day following a deadly massacre in Syria. The day of the attacks was dubbed "Bloody Friday" by Anglophone media and "Black Friday" among Francophone media in Europe and North Africa.
The name of the Islamic State has been contentious since 2013. In Arabic, the group called itself al-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fī al-`Irāq wa al-Shām, which it adopted in April 2013. The literal translation of its previous name resulted in confusion, resulting in both ISIS and ISIL, two acronyms based on different literal translations of the name into English. Apart from these, an Arabic-derived acronym, "Daesh", Da'ish or Dā`iš (داعش), which is also the common name for the group beyond the Arabic-speaking parts of the world. Finally, the group's current name caused controversy due to its English translation as Islamic State and as a result, both the previous acronyms are still widely used, or a qualifier is often added to the IS name, such as "Islamic State militant group", "Islamic State extremist group", "Islamic State terrorist group", "self-styled Islamic State" or "so-called Islamic State".
Fabien Clain was a purported veteran jihadist terrorist loyal to the Islamic State. He had French nationality and was of Réunionnais origin.
Liwa Dawud was an armed group in the Syrian Civil War headquartered in Samrin in the Idlib Governorate and originated as a subunit in Suqour al-Sham then later became an independent faction then joined the Jaysh al-Sham coalition until 2014 when the group along with its leader defected to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant during the course of the Inter-rebel conflict during the Syrian Civil War.
Fatiha Mohamed Taher Mejjati is a Moroccan jihadist. She is the widow of Karim Mejjati, co-founder of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group and member of Al-Qaeda. Karim Mejjati is suspected of planning the 2003 Casablanca bombings and the 2004 Madrid train bombings.
Nicolas Hénin is a French journalist who publishes in written media, radio and television. As a specialist of the Middle East, he has covered the Iraq War and the Syrian Civil War. He was captured by ISIS in Syria on 22 June 2013, along with three other Frenchmen, and held hostage until 18 April 2014. After his liberation, Hénin co-founded Action Résilience, a network promoting level-headedness in anti-terrorism, and had become a notable voice in the fight against hate speech.
The origins of the Islamic State group can be traced back to three main organizations. Earliest of these was the "Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād" organization, founded by the Jihadist leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in Jordan in 1999. The other two predecessor organizations emerged during the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S. occupation forces. These included the "Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah" group founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004 and the "Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah" group founded by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his associates in the same year.
Abdul Nasser Qardash is an Iraqi militant who in 2019 was wrongly reported as the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). He was also nicknamed "The Professor" and "Destroyer". Qardash was a high-ranking and very influential member of ISIL with close connections to its first Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and tipped as a potential candidate for ISIL leadership succession. However days after the death of al-Baghdadi, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was ultimately chosen as the new declared leader of ISIL. Qardash was captured by Iraqi security forces in 2020.
Myriam Benraad is a French political scientist. She specializes in the politics of the Arab world.
The Katiba des Narvalos is a non-partisan collective constituted from citizens from all venues of life, dedicated to fighting jihadism on social networks and more generally on the Internet. Their tactics comprise parody, as to discredit jihadist propaganda; surveying and reporting offending accounts; and infiltrating cyber-jihadist networks as to prevent terrorist attacks.
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